Scene for Everybody!

Lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans* individuals who have some kind of disability or chronic illness face double discrimination in their daily lives. They might be affected by discrimination because of their gender identity and/or sexual orientation as well as because of their disability. This discrimination does not only take place in the ’normal’ mainstream society, but also in the specific subcultures and scenes themselves. A lesbian wheel-chair user might be discriminated among other wheel-chair users because of her sexual orientation, while she experiences discrimination in the LGBT-scene because of her disability. This discrimination in the LGBT-scene must not even be an act of ’bad intention’ – it happens whenever people don’t think about the fact that there are, e.g., queer wheel-chair users. A queer initiative might organize an LGBT party and invite all LGBT individuals – but maybe the party is on the fifth floor, there is no elevator in that building and the apartment where the party takes place itself is full of narrow passages and ground irregularities... How could a wheel-chair user participate? And even if the party location is barrier-free accessible – if the organizers forget to mention this on the invitation, many handicapped people might not show up because they assume that it is not.

 

So the pure fact of not paying attention, of not considering their presence, can cause discrimination for people who live with some sort of disability or chronic illness.

 

The initiative and association „Queerhandicap“ wants to – in it’s own words – build bridges for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals with disabilities. The activists of Queerhandicap want to build bridges between handicapped LGBT People and ’the normal world’, between themselves and the ’not handicapped LGBT-scene’, among themselves (networking) and between those who are (politically) active and those who are looking for consultation. They are working on making LGBT people with handicaps more visible by working together with media. They provide information about groups, contact persons and initiatives as well as about barrier-free LGBT-bars in different German cities.  And – to come back to the above example – they encourage the LGBT-Scene to ’plan barrier-free’. For that, tips for how to plan a barrier-free party can be found on the website:

 

http://www.queerhandicap.de/index.htm